Simplifying things as much as
possible:
"West Germanic" is divided
into:
(A) Ingvaeonic (the North Sea cluster) =
Anglo-Frisian (English + Frisian) and Low German (including Old
Saxon)
(B) Istvaeonic (the Weser-Rhine
cluster) = Old Low Franconian and its daughter languages, including Modern Dutch
and Afrikaans
(C) Erminionic = a large bag where we place
the rest of West Germanic, in particular Old High German and whatever derives
from it (including Modern German and Yiddish)
I'm not in favour of regarding West
Germanic as a valid genetic grouping. Rather than that, NW Germanic consists of
Scandinavian and the messy residue which cannot be reduced to a single ancestral
language. What I mean is that it makes sense to speak of Proto-NW-Germanic and
Proto-Scandinavian, but not of Proto-West-Germanic. Similarly, while NW Germanic
has some kind of genetic coherence (one can point to shared innovations defining
the group), "East Germanic" is just a cover term for anything that is Germanic
but not NW Germanic (actually, Gothic is the only documented form of Germanic
that meets this description, though it's virtually sure there were many more
such "basal Germanic" languages).
We like binary divisions and our genetic
taxonomies are typically of that kind. In real life a different scenario is more
typical: a mother language produces a relatively large number of daughters,
most of which give rise to tiny groupings of dialects while one suddenly
explodes into a sizeable daughter taxon with several descendent languages. Plus,
of course, there will be a lot of lateral influence to puzzle us even more
:)
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2001 10:29 PM
Subject: [tied] Inguaeonum [was Celtic Jutland]
I gather this is where we pick up the term
'Ingvaeonic'.
Every time I delve into the history of Germanic (and
English
particularly) you run up against the term Invaeonic; this seems a
synonym for Northwest Germanic; I recall 'Littoral' or the such also
being used, in distinction to 'Continental. There are some who want to
divide Germanic into North, East, West (Continental, High German) and
Northwest (Low German).
The idea seems to be that NW Germanic was
cluster of dialects sharing
features of early North Germanic and early West
Germanic.
Humph. I think there are too many over-qualified
under-employed
historians of Germanic for our own good.
For the past
few years, I've been comfortable using the terms West
Germanic, subdivided
into High German and Low German, with English,
Dutch, Frisian and
Plattdeutch being Low German.
Ok. What have I gotten
wrong?